I’ve narrowed down my choice of do it all commuter / adventurer / whatever bike to the Cross Check and the Kaffenback. For now, anyway. I want to be able to:

Ride 10 miles on the road at a reasonable pace. I’m not good at getting up in a morning.
Take a much more circuitous route home, possibly involving singletrack, woods, mud and gravel.
Fit mudguards. The less filthy I get the better.
Fit a rack and panniers. I’d quite like to do pseudo touring (ie. ride to a B&B and meet the Mrs or ride to a friends house 60 miles away then ride back the next day. That kind of thing. I might even do some overnight bivvying).
Not have to clean it much. If at all. Sadly the Alfine Kaff doesn’t fit into the C2W scheme (it’s £100 too much).

The Kaffenback is tempting, ‘cos On-One currently have an offer for a grand with some super high end kit – apparently SRAM Red is very good.

The Surly is tempting because it looks ace, and apparently is super good to ride. Plus I’ll soon kill the drivetrain and have to replace it anyway. Possibly with an Alfine or similar.

What would YOU buy?

Can’t speak for the Kaffenback but I have a Cross Check and love it. However, the Kaffenback is now disc brake compatible and you are limited to V’s or cantis on the Surly.

On the plus side the Cross Check has great clearance for both fat tyres and mudguards.

TBH if I was in the market for a new bike the Kaffenback would probably trump the Cross Check for the quality of kit and the disc brakes. I’d still keep my Surly though; its ace.

Mudguards (rather suprisingly) are a really bad idea in mud as in order to work they need to be ~5mm from the tyre, leavingno room for mud to accumulate.

I’m not *that* bothered about discs I don’t think… It’s mostly flat around here, so rim brakes should be fine.

I’d rather have a good frame with lesser kit, but the offers on the Kaff are VERY tempting.

**edit** interesting about the mudguards. It’d still be nice to have the option though, for road if nowt else.

I’ve the last Kaff for commuting and it’s nice – but not much mudguard clearance particularly on the back. I’ve 700x30s and I had to cut short the mudguard above the front mech band and cable tie it to the down tube to get any sort of clearance. Certainly wouldn’t work in mud.

Don’t know if they gave new Kaff more clearance you’d certainly need to check with Planet X first. No way does the old frame have proper clearance claimed for 32c tyres.

If a frame’s got the clearance for bigger tyres then it’d be silly to get one without mudguard mounts too, they totally transform winter riding.

Clearance on the older models of Kaffenback is meant to be quite tight with CX tyres, not sure what the newer ones are like.

I plumped for a Ragley Rodwell for similar purposes, but it’s much more of a race frame, carbon forks are a pain to fit ‘guards to, and it’s not really heavy duty enough for loaded touring (besides which, one of the rivnuts for the rack mount has come loose inside the frame, rendering it unable to take a rack).

Now got a Crosscheck on the way after I had a test ride courtesy of Cadence in Bath, which confirmed what everyone says about them: relatively heavy but they ride well nice.

Any problems with mudguards off road are more likely to come from sticks or rocks getting up behind them. Stick getting caught behind mudguard + fair amount of speed = mangled mudguard – unless you have “quick release” stays like the newer SKS ones.

Heavy I don’t really mind, I’m used to hefting a Cove G-Spot up hills 😉

One thing that does bug me about the Cross Check full builds is the bar end shifters – I’ve got used to the Shimano flippy brake lever things on my road bike. What’re bar ends like to use?

cotic x witha salsa rack mount seatclamp would do the lot as well and leave you with the options for discs if yuo wanted them. Have one and i really like it for commuting adn will use it for similar uses to yourself. I think a cross check would be ace if they did a disc version and it had sti’s rather than bar end shifters. Had a kaffenback a few years ago, comfy to ride but really a road bike, howver teh red deal is good, are they still adding on £100 for c2w though?

I found it totally counterintuitive on the test bike, but I have been on STIs for a few yesrs. I’ve used bikes with friction (down tube) shifters before for touring and had no problems. They work, they are reliable (not that I’ve had any problems with STIs) and being able to trim the front mech is cool – although I realise you can do this with many STIs too. I wouldn’t like to use them for cycling in traffic particularly.

The brake levers on the stock ‘Check are quite angular, not as smooth as Shimano, so they feel like they might have a bit more purchase over the rough stuff. And the bars are Salsa Bell Laps, which always get recommended on CX threads. Overall it seemed like a really well thought out spec. They could probably have stuck some Sora or non-series STIs on it and made the same price point, but then the beard and SPD sandal crowd would have been put off.

are they still adding on £100 for c2w though?

Apparently so, yes. Bummer.

My SKS mudguards fitted to my Pompino are coping fine with the mud that gets flung up from the towpath at the moment
You want some nice wide ones like these, you can adjust how far the mudguard is from the tyre which is useful if it gets really muddy

The clearance on my check is much greater than on my friends (original) kaffenback. 35mm cross tyres just fit in the kaff, I run 35mm land cruisers with the wide full SMS guards and they allow enough mud room for the wheels to turn in ‘normal’ mud. Also gives me the option of running massive tyres without guards if I want which can be fun.

Apparently so, yes. Bummer.

Margins so ludicrously tight on our stuff, we have to or we’d be losing money.

Wasn’t dissing you Brant, just a bummer ‘cos I need to replan my, erm, plans!

Photos of old and new(prototype) Kaff clearance here. Seems to be loads of clearance, I’m considering flogging my roadie and ancient tourer and getting one for just the same uses as the OP.

Kaff mk2

If you do a search on here for a guy called placid casual there are a couple of threads too.

Midlifecrashes, that’s the seat stay. if you look at the chainstay it’s not quite as roomy:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/placid_casual/5492755708/in/set-72157625764526755/

An interesting thread, the kaffenback and the surly LHT are both on my next bike shortlist but I think I’ve just gone off the Surlys as I hadn’t noticed that they’ve got bar-end shifters.

Also on my list is the pompetamine, but I’m not really sure what the difference between that and the kaff are…one’s on-one so ‘mtb-y’ and the other’s planet x so more roadie? Can someone please tell me (especially brant if you’re still lurking) in simple speak.

The whole mud clearance surely isn’t a massive issue*, I for one wouldn’t be taking this bike out when it’s real mudfest conditions, and offroad will most likely be fireroads, dis-used railway lines, towpaths and the like.

*EDIT: I suppose it might be if you intend to CX race on it.

Kaff and Pomp have very similar geometry for the moment. I do mean to give them an overhaul as they are a bit odd in some ways, I’d quite like to lower the BB a bit, but it does work well a bit higher for fixes.

Also considering an 853 Kaffenback. Because.

Ok, so I’ve managed to talk myself out of both the drop barred Kaff (outside what I can spend on C2W) AND the Cross Check (really don’t fancy bar end shifters, I spend a lot of time in traffic on the hoods).

So – curveball, and a bit different to what I initially wanted – what does anyone think of the Pompetamine Alfine? Can I stick some ‘cross tyres on it and go for a play? Will I find the flat bars hideously annoying on long, boring road sections (my commute takes me down some long, pretty straight roads)?

i’ve used an alfine off road on two hardtail frames, but it’s now languishing in the garage unused. not sure what i’m going to do with it.
had a flat-bar pompino for a while. it was ‘ok’, then put drops on it, never really felt like it fitted right.
now run a surly crosscheck and am really enjoying it for the mostly off-road ride into work through parks, along canals, and what-not. it’s a fun bike. runs 35 cx tyres with masses of room for larger and a planet-x uncle john carbon fork ( which has guard eyelits ).
maybe you could buy bits to build one up to your B2W limit and then furnish the rest of the parts yourself if required?
not really helping am i? 😀

If the Kaff is getting redesinged, It’d be nice to see a touring version and a lighter, sharper bike for faster day rides & everything else.

The 26 inch wheel option for Surly LHT’s is a great idea for a proper tourer as well.

maybe you could buy bits to build one up to your B2W limit and then furnish the rest of the parts yourself if required?

I could probably just do that with bits from the classifieds though… And do I REALLY need a new bike? I could just get by with the roadie I have…

You don’t need to go with bar end shifters on the Cross. Pretty much any configuration you like. Got race blades and slicks on mine for commute and cyclo cross wheelset for fun. What’s not to like?

Well no, but on C2W it needs to be a full build, and they all seem to come with bar ends.

If the Kaff is getting redesinged, It’d be nice to see a touring version and a lighter, sharper bike for faster day rides & everything else.

The 26 inch wheel option for Surly LHT’s is a great idea for a proper tourer as well.

Wasn’t the Kaffenback always aimed at the middleground, not a light road bike, not a touring bike, just a bike to ride while the nice one lives indoors over the winter. A nice light steel road bike at a reasnoble price would be nice though, preferably lugged, singular make one, so I’m guessin O-O/P-X could make one cheeper?

2nd point, Inbred (assuming you didn’t want drops)

[edit]

£1000, full ultegra, reynolds 725, lugged, kysrium wheels! Wonder how much postage is.

http://bikesdirect.com/products/motobecane/gran_premio_pro.htm

[/edit]

on C2W it needs to be a full build

Get ’em to give you a voucher and order the parts for a build from your friendly LBS.

Alternatively, just get the full build, flog the shifters on the CTC classifieds, keep the brake levers in case you want to go SS/fixed and fit some second hand STIs. Plenty of old bashed up ones for sale out there. The complete build is fairly unglamorous – Alex rims on Deore hubs, etc – but it’s all durable kit that should work fine,

Exactly as Mr Agreeable says. Got mine on the C2W scheme last year as a build through the LBS who ordered the frame and did the rest.

Cross checks are simply great. Won an Mtb race on mine. Been to the pub on it. Rode to Belgium. Does it all.

Unglamorous is fine 😉

Is it pretty easy to change the shifters round then? I envisage all kinds of cabling nightmares.

Shouldn’t be any more difficult than changing the cables. You’ll need to unwrap the bar tape but you be able to reuse it, and possibly the cable inners too (dot a bit of superglue on the ends to stop them fraying).

Nice clear guide to the anatomy of bar ends here:

http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/bar-end-shifter-service

And a guide to wrangling bar tape:

http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/handlebar-tape-installation-drop-bar

Park Tool’s website is ace for this sort of thing…

Cotic Roadrat is tempting me now as well, I reckon it would handle some singletrack… Probably.

Shame the >X< doesn’t have rack mounts!

I have worked out a little bodge to fit a rack on my X. Lower mounts share the guard mounts and to one is the canti brake cable stop braced to the canti mounts.

Hmmm… Interesting

check with cotic, my understanding was there was some thought about putting rack mounts onto the x although ti did not hapen last time. I have just ordered a salsa rack lock seat clamp for £20 sorts that job out. Frame is lovely to ride.

Apologies for the advertising but…

Cotic X for sale

My 2p: the Kaff is the best value frame out there and rides really well.

You will not regret discs – sure you don’s need them but that’s been said about them on mtbs…and about indexed gears, sti, clipless pedals…

To my knowledge, those saying “you don’t need discs” haven’t tried them on road. And I’ve NEVER heard of anyone trying them and going back.

In fact, I think we may have a winner… Ticks all the boxes I think, unless anyone has any suggestions to the contrary?

http://www.on-one.co.uk/i/q/CBOOPOMPETVERSA/on_one_pompetamine_versa_

Mudguards and rear entry wheel removal trickier, otherwise the frame is a Kaff.